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(From Greenland, Canto IV)
GREENLAND’S bold sons, by instinct, sallied forth | |
| On barks, like icebergs drifting from the north, | |
| Crossed without magnet undiscovered seas, | |
| And, all surrendering to the stream and breeze, | |
| Touched on the line of that twin-bodied land | 5 |
| That stretches forth to either pole a hand, | |
| From arctic wilds that see no winter sun | |
| To where the oceans of the world are one, | |
| And round Magellan’s straits, Fuego’s shore, | |
| Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific roar. | 10 |
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| Regions of beauty there these rovers found; | |
| The flowery hills with emerald woods were crowned; | |
| Spread o’er the vast savannas, buffalo herds | |
| Ranged without master; and the bright-winged birds | |
| Made gay the sunshine as they glanced along, | 15 |
| Or turned the air to music with their song. | |
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| Here from his mates a German youth had strayed, | |
| Where the broad river cleft the forest glade; | |
| Swarming with alligator-shoals, the flood | |
| Blazed in the sun, or moved in clouds of blood; | 20 |
| The wild boar rustled headlong through the brake; | |
| Like a live arrow leaped the rattlesnake; | |
| The uncouth shadow of the climbing bear | |
| Crawled on the grass, while he aspired in air; | |
| Anon with hoofs, like hail, the greenwood rang, | 25 |
| Among the scattering deer a panther sprang: | |
| The stripling feared not, yet he trod with awe, | |
| As if enchantment breathed o’er all he saw, | |
| Till in his path uprose a wilding vine; | |
| Then o’er his memory rushed the noble Rhine; | 30 |
| Home and its joys, with fulness of delight, | |
| So rapt his spirit, so beguiled his sight, | |
| That in those glens of savage solitude | |
| Vineyards and cornfields, towns and spires, he viewed, | |
| And through the image-chamber of his soul | 35 |
| The days of other years like shadows stole. * * * * * | |
| Wineland the glad discoverers called that shore, | |
| And back the tidings of its riches bore; | |
| But soon returned with colonizing bands,— | |
| Men that at home would sigh for unknown lands; | 40 |
| Men of all weathers, fit for every toil, | |
| War, commerce, pastime, peace, adventure, spoil; | |
| Bold master-spirits, where they touched they gained | |
| Ascendance, where they fixed their foot they reigned. | |
| Both coasts they long inherited, though wide | 45 |
| Dissevered; stemming to and fro the tide, | |
| Free as the Syrian dove explores the sky, | |
| Their helm their hope, their compass in their eye, | |
| They found at will, where’er they pleased to roam, | |
| The ports of strangers or their northern home, | 50 |
| Still midst tempestuous seas and zones of ice, | |
| Loved as their own, their unlost Paradise. | |
| Yet was their Paradise forever lost: | |
| War, famine, pestilence, the power of frost, | |
| Their woes combining, withered from the earth | 55 |
| This late creation, like a timeless birth, | |
| The fruit of age and weakness, forced to light, | |
| Breathing awhile,—relapsing into night. | |
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